One of the LEAST DEMOCRATIC aspects of American presidential elections is the selection of a vice presidential running mate. The Democratic party voters across the country selected Joe Biden as their presidential nominee. That’s democracy in action. But only one person, one man, selected the vice presidential nominee. That’s autocracy in action. Joe Biden, personally, individually, and unilaterally picked Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s VP nominee. Yes, the nominating convention ratified Biden’s pick, but when has either party’s convention ever rejected the person hand-picked by the presidential nominee???
This undemocratic process for VP selection is of particular importance this year. As I have written before, I believe it is more likely than not that if Biden wins the White House, he won’t still be serving as president four years from now. Kamala Harris will – I predict – take over as the de facto if not the de jure president.
Biden picked her, but have any Democrats outside of California ever voted for her? No. Not one. She ended her presidential candidacy before the first votes were cast in the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. More than 19 million Democrats marked their primary ballots for Biden. Close to 10 million Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries and almost 3 million voted for Elizabeth Warren. Zero Democrats voted for Kamala Harris in the primaries. Zero. So if she ascends to the presidency from the vice presidency sometime between January 20, 2021 and January 19, 2024, it will be based entirely on the votes of the joint Biden-Harris ticket.
(I know the same applies to Mike Pence. Prior to Trump’s selecting Pence as his running mate in 2016, only the voters of Indiana had ever chosen him to hold office.)
Although Henry A. Wallace is not exactly a household name in the 21st century, he was well known in the era of The New Deal. Roosevelt selected him as his running mate for his third term. According to Alex Ross of the The New Yorker, “There is no telling what might have happened had [Wallace] become President. Perhaps he would have appeased the Soviets; perhaps he would have dragged the U.S. into a confrontation.”
Fortunately for the country, FDR dumped Wallace in 1944 in favor of Harry Truman. That was FDR’s unilateral decision. The history of America and the world might have been very different had Wallace not been swapped out and replaced by Truman on the Democratic ticket. Again, there was nothing democratic about that decision. Rather, it was dictated by one man. And one man deciding who the next president of the United States will be is not exactly the hallmark of democracy.
